Smells like delicious

"My hands smell like butter." 

"Your hands love it. It's like being at a spa all day…an Italian spa where they yell at you."

Enriched dough is a whole new story. Just as I was figuring out what we were doing before, lean dough (dough that isn't enriched by sugar or eggs), we started adding a shit ton of butter to EVERYTHING. Yesterday, when we were supposed to be focussing on our bread evaluation, we prepped a lot of stuff for what we were going to be doing today. We only produced one loaf of bread yesterday and yet I was so stressed by the end of the day. Today, we produced four different things and I swamped all day long. This is good practice because this is what it's going to be like in a work environment. You're not going to have time to stand around and waste time. But the first couple days are an ADJUSTMENT. After we all left the kitchen (25 minutes late), we all walked into the change room and stared blankly at our lockers for a couple of minutes in complete silence. We are newbies. And welcome to the jungle.

Today was rewarding though. I got a really good sense of what making enriched dough is really like. Incorporating such a large amount of butter takes some getting used to, especially when I'm used to lean dough. Our recipes have been really finicky too. We are generally having to add more flour or moisture than the recipe calls for by up to 100g in some cases. My recipe sheets look hazardous because there are all of these notations like, "SO wet. +100 g flour" or "Double the water. Triple the water." 

By the end of the day, however, when we were tearing at a pan of sticky buns, still dripping from the pan, everything was forgotten. It was Friday and we had the entire weekend to process that day whilst being consoled by butter. As I was walking out of the school, I was examining my hands as they glistened. Everything glistens. As soon as I hit the winter air, however, they shrivelled and cracked just like before.  

These are my consolation for the weekend. 

We made the brioche dough that we prepped yesterday. Half of it became buns, a quarter became a loaf, and the remaining quarter became buns. I left behind over half of what I made. 

We also made kugelhopf, which is a special occasion bread from Germany, Poland or France depending on who you ask. It's very similar to brioche. It's traditionally baked in a fluted, bunt pant-like mould and then dusted with icing sugar once it's cooled. The fact that I have a loaf of brioche at home already and I was bringing home all the other stuff, I only brought home a couple of buns for Moozh to try. I made mostly buns as well, since I wanted to give my rolling and shaping more practice. It was good practice and also gave Chef ample opportunity to make ball jokes, along the lines of 'handling my balls' or advising me not to 'shake my balls'. 

We also made hot cross buns today, replete with the sticky piped on cross. I love, quite seriously, LOVE hot cross buns. But I hate the piping mixture. I have picked it off my hot cross bun since as long as I can remember. And the recipe for the piping 'goo' was so awful, it busted open my parchment bag. (Ironically, the 'word of the day' app I have had 'viscid' for today, which means 'having glutinous consistency, sticky, adhesive.) I, with all the subtlety I could muster, threw the bag in the garbage with a quiet expletive under my breath. It was five minutes to two and there were still five pans of product in the oven. Any patience I could have extended towards the hot cross buns was absent. So our buns went in without the cross, which meant they were better and rounded out the sample platter I was putting together. 

Moozh, in the other kitchen, got to do some really fun and tasty things today. Yesterday the culinary students learned consommé, which is a clarified broth and/or soup base. Of course, being French, it is a arduous and finicky process at times but, as Moozh can attest, it makes for a tasty result. 

Then today, they jumped from what I consider simple, foundational cooking like soup and dressing, to venison roast with red wine au jus which, to a vegetarian, sounds quite advanced. But again, looks taaaaaaaasty. 

Culinary plating always looks so clean and bright. I know my obsession with Instagram right now affects the kinds of pictures I take and looking darker but a meal on a wide, clean white plate is really striking. 

It's Friday and thank God for that. 

Grab a loved one. Eat some food. Repeat.